Test scores fall at schools accused of cheating

Almost all of the Houston elementary schools under scrutiny for possibly cheating to produce high test scores in past years posted significantly weaker results under this year's tightly monitored exams.

Campus passing rates at all but one of the 18 schools with questionable testing histories dropped at a greater clip than the overall Houston Independent School District passing rate on the third-grade Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills reading exam.

"That's very improbable," Haladyna said. "You wonder about the validity of scores when they jump around like that. All citizens have a right to question the validity of scores when the results are so implausible."

Students took the TAKS last month in classrooms monitored by 600 HISD employees. Reacting to allegations of possible cheating made in late December, HISD officials had warned teachers and principals that this year's scores would be closely analyzed for signs of impropriety.

Other factors besides cheating, such as teacher turnover rates and changing student populations, could cause major score fluctuations, Haladyna said. But that doesn't explain why virtually every suspected school regressed more than the typical campus, he said.

HISD officials cautioned against reading too much into the poorer results by the 18 schools. In an e-mail, spokesman Terry Abbott pointed out that some of the 170 elementary schools that have not been suspected of cheating also posted scores substantially lower than last year's. And the cheating investigations at most of the schools are focusing on score anomalies at other grade levels and subjects rather than third-grade reading, Abbott said.

The three schools being investigated specifically for questionable third-grade reading scores in 2004 — Douglass, Osborne and E.O. Smith — had some of the sharpest drops in 2005 scores.

Passing rates at the 18 schools facing cheating allegations fell an average of 19 percentage points. The drop ranged from 30 or more points at Crawford, Douglass and E.O. Smith elementaries to just 1 percentage point at Isaacs Elementary. Overall, the passing rate for the 14,751 HISD students who took the reading test that's used to determine whether they move on to the fourth grade fell five percentage points to 82 percent.

Numbers down

In addition, average scale scores, which measure the number of correctly answered questions, increased 10 points for HISD's English-speaking students but fell an average of nearly 70 points at the 18 schools with suspect testing histories. Only two of those schools — Kashmere Gardens and TSU/
HISD Lab School
— increased their average scale scores at a higher rate than the rest of the school district.

Last year, 13 of the schools suspected of cheating recorded average scale scores that ranked in the top half of all HISD schools on the English exam. This year, that number shrunk to four.

Seven of the 14 Houston schools with the biggest drops in average scale scores are under investigation for cheating.

It would be wrong to conclude that cheating occurred at any school based solely on the scale scores, Abbott said.

While their English-speaking classmates posted lower scale scores on the exam, Spanish speakers at Petersen and Scott elementaries showed progress. The three other schools facing cheating allegations that tested students in Spanish— Sanchez, Crawford and Gregg — produced lower scale scores in both languages.

HISD Superintendent Abe Saavedra ordered investigations of possible cheating at two dozen schools earlier this year after a Dallas Morning News analysis of scale scores revealed statistically improbable improvement in hundreds of classrooms across the state. All but one of those investigations are ongoing. Last month, HISD administrators fired two fifth-grade math teachers at Sanderson Elementary and demoted the principal after determining the teachers gave answers to students and that the principal should have been aware of the cheating. The teachers have denied any wrongdoing.